Hello

Hello, welcome, sit a spell, thank you for your visits.  Tea, coffee, hot chocolate anyone?  Përshëndetje, مرحبا, Привет, Hola, Zdravo, Ahoj, Hej, Hallo, Tere, maligayang pagdating, hei, bonjour!, Ola, Guten Tag!, γεια σου, שלום, हैलो, hello, halo, ciao!, sveiki, labas, hallo, سلام, witaj, Olá, salut, здороваться, здраво, ahoj, zdravo, ¡hola!, hej, สวัสด ี, merhaba, привет, xin chào

All of you who stop for a visit, read my missives, then leave me notes of joy or wonder, know that I am grateful for you beyond measure, beyond words.   The gifts we have received of writing, reading, being able to share with each other on this heartfelt level will surely shift the world.  Gratefully, I say a prayer for you all.  May we all know a world of peace.

Whispering Chimes

Last year my neighbor had the most exquisite chimes. I loved the sound, waiting for them to ring throughout the day and night.  The chimes would let me know when the wind blew down the sidewalk from the gate to the Oak Tree.  My own wind tunnel where it was always cooler when I walked than in the direct sunlight.  After a year, my neighbor bought a house and moved away.   I so missed the chimes that spoke to me so often, telling me the stories of the wind.

One day I decided to check an Amazon ad to see if there was a chime I could hang that would talk to me the way the previous one did and sure enough a few days later I found a really long one I could hang from the rafters with the help of a ladder.  Yeah, there was a ladder in the storage room.   And then I saw my yellow bell and added it to my artistic corner collection.

I began to listen to the chimes again realizing right away that the new chimes didn’t clang, they whispered.  I had to listen really well if I wanted to hear them.  Apparently so did the little red and white flowers.  Because for the first time since 2013 the bush near my front door grew flowers.  I’d like to think it’s because the flowers wanted to hear what the whisper chimes were singing, so they bloomed.  Probably it was because Blake gave them so much water and food they were really, really happy.

 

 

The Lack of Hugs

 

When the pandemic began, a wonderful friend brought me some books from the University of Arizona library which he thought I should read and I didn’t want to.  They were written a few years earlier.  Scary reading about pandemics and such.  I couldn’t get past page 3 and that’s not like me.  Usually, I’m thrilled to have something new to explore.  Delightful friend that I am, I figured when you get to be my age, you can do whatever you want.

When men want you to do something, they never give up.  A week later I get another of Annie Dillard’s books “For the Time Being” and promptly fall in love.  When that happens I devour the book like gelato at the top of La Encantada.  I find a paragraph that so speaks to me, I need to answer back.  The feeling is visceral and immediate and that part of me that wonders about everything is wondering why I’m reacting like this.

It’s the lack of hugs.  I can no longer touch the people I want to touch.  The words are on page 135 in Annie’s book.  I can’t quote them because I don’t have permission.  But when memories come they’re like an Arizona monsoon in August – powerful, wet, and deliciously cleansing.

As a senior at ASU I volunteered at the Jewish Community Center in Phoenix.  One Friday afternoon a man in a worn suit with a small suitcase came in.  He was so thin.   I called my Mother and asked if I could bring him home for Shabbat dinner.  While he was sitting on the couch he opened the suitcase, took out a book, and gave me a present of a book from the suitcase.  I do not remember the name of the book or the man.  What I remember most all these years later is the gigantic hole in the bottom of his shoe where the ball of his foot continuously touched the ground.

Everything I feel bubbles onto my face.  I am not much of a pretender.  As soon as I started reading Annie’s words on page 135 it all came flooding back like an August monsoon.

Any wonder when my Mother used to call, “It’s pouring, come in or you’ll get wet.”  My response was always, “Its okay Mom, I’m washable.”

Auwbree

 

Joy all wrapped up with a pink ribbon

Yelling “Seewah” or “Zeewah”

Running down the sidewalk

With a lime green spray water bottle

Full to the brim

In front of my place at 10 am

Once the sprinklers stop

 

Her Hershey chocolate hair in tiny pony tails

With rubber bands standing straight up

Pointing at the sun whispering “warm me, warm me”

Let winter be gone, for here comes the world

Brimming with delicious promise

Wanting to know what color the newly planted

Baby tomatoes are today

Who raised you?

“Who raised you?  Wolves?”

We’re at Denny’s a couple Thanksgiving’s back with a neighbor who has no filter.  Sixty year old women are not supposed to ask sexual questions of the much younger waitress or dinner mates at Denny’s or anywhere else.  By the time you are twenty you should know how to speak appropriately in public.  If you don’t, you should pay attention and learn or remain quiet or stay home.  It’s neither cute, nor is it funny.

Television commercials are the best.  Way better than the shows they interrupt.  Imagine you are at a banquet table in a ballroom (at La Paloma Resort) for a fancy wedding of yesteryear.  The colors are sepia and cream and everyone is dressed to the nines.

Wolves are everywhere jumping from table to table, eating everything in sight when the actress playing the friend of the bride yells to another actor, “which one is his mother?”  I lost it.  My insides were laughing so hard I couldn’t contain them.

Geico’s advertising team are as smart as they are funny.  Probably deserve the millions of dollars they receive for 30 second slots.  Fifteen percent or not, now they’ve gone too far.  They borrowed my favorite one liner.  One I typically used with twelve year olds in another life when I was a school teacher.  Now I find myself using it at Denny’s and other places that serve dinner from 3 pm till 9 pm shown on a menu for 55 years old and older.  “Who raised you?  Wolves?”

Trader Joe’s

I was at Trader Joe’s the other day and opened my mouth to the checker.

“Pharaoh Trump has clearly pissed off the Almighty,” said I.  “And look what has happened?  He sent upon us a plague.”

The checker(about 20) turned ash white, looked me in the eyes and said, “Do you believe that?  Really?”

“Yup, I do.  Absolutely, it’s the Old Testament come to life.  I wonder what the next plague will be?”

Poor kid, I should not have done that.  But I’ll bet he went home, hugged his Mom and looked up the Book of Exodus.

Comprehension

There is a reason we could never be lovers

Not the usual nonsense

Of men and women

Of body parts sized to perfection

By “plastic” surgeons

It’s more the hair pulling nonsense of fifth grade

For I have become grown

More fully formed

Another life than your sophomore boy

Put on display in full view

For all who arrive to sit on bar stools

Watching 102 inch screens playing nothing but noise.

So here I am aware of life and love

of meaning,

with comprehension of the heart.

Sad to learn sometimes intelligence is a fatal disease.

Nusha

 

Nusha didn’t do anything quickly.  She was so happy to have survived the Holocaust and have food in the refrigerator, she figured she could take an entire day to cook a pot roast. I remember calling her one Friday morning early and could hear her clanging in the pantry.

“Mom, what are you doing,” I asked?  

“We’re having company for dinner. I’m making pot roast and potatoes.” She sounded so happy and here I was going to say something stupid, as daughters do, and ruin a perfectly beautiful morning.

“Mom, it’s eight o’clock in the morning. You can’t put it in now, it will taste like shoe leather.”  I could hear her smile disappear.

“What’s wrong with you?” she retorted.  What if they show up early?”

Heart Listening

There is a wind that whispers

only in Flagstaff, Arizona

near the corner

of I-40 and St Mary’s Blvd.

A wind that stops your feet moving forward

so your heart may become aware of

the birds sharing their secret places,

where they fly to find those

warm toasted pumpkin seeds

Melinda leaves on the window sill

for that special breakfast,

only she knows how to make.

The Gardener’s Shadow

The umbrella

Known as a Southern live oak

Waits for her heart

Arms open, waiting for an embrace

Roots tethered to the ground,

Unable to run to him

As she once did in another life

Remembered in whispers…

As the morning lavender light rises

Around the east corner of her trunk

He appears wearing a Panama hat,

Carrying a pale aqua watering jug

That provides her nutrition,

Slurps and gulps of his blessings

And while her leaves flirt with the wind

He leaves his shadow near her heart

So she’ll never forget…

The shadows her gardener leaves behind.

 

All rights reserved. ©2019 by Sara Fryd

God Builds NO Walls

An opening in the border wall for cattle to move from Mexico to the States. Arizona has just three cattle ports along its entire border.

Tyrants, dictators never remember history.

Never remember that Berlin came down in hours

The Great Wall is now walked upon

By tourists from other countries,

And the Roman Colosseum mostly exists in selfies

As a background for smiling faces

So our current powerful clown

With his wing man Moscow Mitch

A nightmare from our childhood, steals food from

Welfare children and mothers trying to feed them

Then sends black women back to Somalia

While our current impotent Congress

Afraid of shadows in the afternoon

Hiding behind the Washington Monument

Disregarding the Lincoln Memorial

Forgetting the history of this amazing country

Does nothing…

Except approve ownership of AK-47s

A Soviet invention

Approved by the Soviet aligned impotent Congress

Sold by Walmart

On sunny weekend afternoons

With the ammunition enough to kill twenty oblivious folks

In El Paso…

And Moscow Mitch is angered by his nickname

As his wife steals another $40,000 in stock

Authorized by her boss Donnie the clown

The wall builder who never heard that “it’s the space

Between the bars that keep the tiger in the cage.”

On Judgement Day Donnie can explain to God

Why he never created a bridge for people to cross

He only built walls,

Knowing, God never builds walls

Walls never keep people out.

Walls only keep people in.

All rights reserved © 2019 Sara Fryd